Lightning beat Senators, tie team record with 8th straight win
OTTAWA, Ontario — Ben Bishop is simply at his best against his former team.
Bishop made 33 saves and the Tampa Bay Lightning tied a franchise record with their eighth straight victory, 4-1 over the Ottawa Senators on Thursday night.
The win improved Bishop's career mark to 9-0-3 against the Senators, with whom he spent parts of two seasons.
"Like I said in the past, you know some of the guys, obviously you grow up with them playing with them for a couple of years," Bishop said. "You know some of their tendencies, but they're getting new guys it seems like every time, so I'm kind of falling behind on that. I don't know the reason why (I have success), but I'll take them when they're coming."
Cedric Paquette, Ondrej Palat, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos scored for the Lightning, who wrapped up a four-game road trip.
"We knew they were going to be pressing and they did and (Bishop) was there when we needed him," Stamkos said. "That's why he's an elite goalie."
Marc Methot scored the lone goal for the Senators. Andrew Hammond, making his first start since Feb. 11, made 25 saves.
"I felt good about my game, but ... they took advantage of a couple unfortunate bounces," Hammond said. "Unfortunately for us, we just couldn't score."
The Senators finally beat Bishop 5:24 into the third, making it a one-goal game. Zack Smith dropped the puck back to Methot, who put it under the crossbar for his third of the season.
But the Lightning put the game out of reach when Kucherov took advantage of Jean-Gabriel Pageau's giveaway and beat Hammond easily at 18:14. Stamkos added his empty-netter with 14 seconds left.
"I liked our whole game really, except the result," Senators coach Dave Cameron said. "I thought we did a lot of good things against a real good team."
Tampa opened the scoring at 4:14 of the second as Paquette eluded Erik Karlsson and knocked home his own rebound. The Senators have now allowed the first goal in 30 of the last 40 games.
The Lightning caught a break late in the period off a turnover at the blue line by the newly acquired Scott Gomez. Palat had an easy goal as Ottawa's Mike Hoffman was tangled up with Hammond giving the goaltender no chance to make a save.
The Senators caught a break early in the first period when Tampa had a goal called back due to goaltender interference. Anton Stralman scored from just inside the blue line, but Ottawa challenged the goal and it was ruled that Erik Condra interfered with Hammond before the puck crossed the goal line.
"We just didn't generate enough good prime chances in the offensive zone," Methot said. "Against a dynamic, offensive team like that, if you're not going to score a couple goals, you're not going to win the game."
NOTES: Senators D Mark Borowiecki injured his right knee on his first shift and is out indefinitely. ... Gomez, who was signed Wednesday by Ottawa, made his Senators debut. ... Ottawa was without G Craig Anderson (lower body, day-to-day). LW Matt Puempel and D Patrick Wiercioch were healthy scratches. Tampa D Andrej Sustr missed the game with an undisclosed injury and C Jonathan Marchessault was a healthy scratch.
